Hu Yifei is a post-00s student and is currently a junior at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou.

In order to keep himself up late, he spent 6 months independently developing a mobile app to quantify sleep data.

After the app was put on the shelves, it once made the top 100 list in the health and fitness section of the Apple App Store, and was also recommended by editors.

After using his app, many users have a more intuitive feeling about their staying up late, and Hu Yifei's staying up late has also improved.

Recently, in an interview with a reporter from Yangzi Evening News/Ziniu News, he said with a smile: "My 'stay-up star' also went to bed about an hour earlier. I hope I can help more people!"

　　Ziniu News reporter Song Shifeng

　　Staying up late affects study and life

　　App development on a whim

　　Hu Yifei, a native of Jiangxi Province, was born in 2002 and is currently studying computer science at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou.

　　When he was in high school, he didn't dare to stay up late for fear of affecting the study the next day, and his family did not have the habit of staying up late.

After leaving his parents to go to college, his time to fall asleep became more and more late, especially after he had a mobile phone, he would constantly check his mobile phone even in the middle of the night.

"In high school, there were not so many electronic products, so the most pastime was chatting with roommates before going to bed, reading the chicken soup inspirational literature on the bookshelf several times, and fell asleep quickly. But after college, I slept I can't help but use my mobile phone to swipe short videos... It may be more than an hour in a flash, so I often stay up late."

　　Hu Yifei felt that staying up late had affected his life.

After staying up late every time, if there is no class the next day, he will sleep until about 10 o’clock, which reduces the time to wake up in the morning, which also means that there is less free time during the day. “Every time I stay up late, I will feel very regretful. , I feel like I haven't done anything in the morning, and it's noon." Hu Yifei found that staying up late was not only a problem he encountered alone, but everyone around him knew that staying up late had many hazards, but often at night, it would be caused by various reasons. Staying up late, waking up late during the day and falling into a vicious circle.

　　just do it

　　Quantify the time spent staying up late and urge everyone to stay up late

　　Hu Yifei, who is studying computer science, happens to have a programming class. He has been thinking about developing an app for practical combat.

Because he was concerned about the dangers of staying up late, and he wanted to supervise himself to achieve changes, he suddenly had an inspiration one day: to develop an app related to sleep.

He wants to use this app to make people feel that they are staying up late in a visual way, and reduce the frequency of staying up late.

He named the app StaySleep, which means "keep sleeping" and "avoid staying up late".

　　With the popularity of smart products such as mobile phones and bracelets, it has become a fashion to use digital assistants to quantify life.

The term "quantified life" was first proposed by Gary Wolfe and Kevin Kelly, editors of Wired magazine in the United States in 2007, which refers to the use of scientific and technological means to collect and record various data generated in the daily life of individuals, and Conduct analysis and visual presentation to guide life.

　　There is a "quantified life" group on "Douban.com", and the members have a lot of interesting quantitative life practices.

Hu Yifei noticed that there are many quantitative tools developed by others, which quantify drinking water, sleep, screen time, etc. into some numbers and graphs. Sometimes users go out to exercise in order to close the circle of the fitness app, in order to keep accounts. The software's beautiful expenditure chart and deliberately reducing expenditures can clearly feel that these "quantified apps" have improved the efficiency of work. "So I thought of developing an app that quantifies sleep time to urge everyone to stay up late."

　　The inspiration for the development of StaySleep came from the end of 2021, when he happened to see someone in the circle of friends reposting "record sleep by filling in squares". blocks, eventually forming a visual grid diagram.

　　As a computer major, Hu Yifei immediately recognized this grid as the contribution graph he saw on GitHub, the open source project hosting platform commonly used by programmers.

He feels that this method allows people to visually check their staying up late and sleep, but it seems too cumbersome to use Excel to record manually. It would be more convenient to use an app to simply record and create a contribution map through a mobile phone.

If such an app can be linked with other sleep recording software and devices, there is no need to worry about the accuracy of the recording.

　　Self-taught programming from scratch, took 6 months to develop

　　It took him 6 months to develop this app, and he spent 4 months to learn related programming knowledge, because he had other studies at that time, so he took about an hour every day to learn relevant knowledge from scratch, and that course was just taken during the summer vacation. Finish.

During this period, Hu Yifei came up with many new ideas, such as competing with his friends to see who stayed up less often, recording and counting the sleeping places every day... He wrote down all these brainstorms and prepared to implement them slowly in the app. .

　　He started developing StaySleep during the summer vacation this year, and for a month and a half, he was basically researching this problem during the day, "because there are a lot of things to learn that you don't know, and a lot of information to check."

　　Because I am developing the app by myself, I have to do all the work myself, not only to write code, but also to write copywriting, draw promotional pictures, etc., "As a science and engineering man, it really took me a long time to come up with a few decent propaganda. picture."

　　At the beginning of August, StaySleep officially launched the public test. Seeing that the number of users who signed up for the test in the background gradually increased, Hu Yifei was both happy and anxious.

The results of the first public beta were good. Although he did not receive many negative comments, he still felt very guilty when he saw 40 crashes out of 400 starts in the background.

　　On the evening of August 18th, StaySleep was officially launched on the App Store. Seeing that users could finally download and install it, Hu Yifei felt very happy, "It is also a small dream in my life to develop an app independently."

　　During the development of the app, he didn't stay up late to work, "I separate the development program from other activities. When I actually develop it, I still treat it as a very formal job, and I do it regularly during the day and some at night. other things."

　　However, during the period of submitting the app, he did stay up late, because he received a lot of feedback from the first public beta, and there are many places to modify.

　　Mom is a loyal app user

　　I slept 1 hour earlier

　　StaySleep is a software that quantifies sleep data and helps users reduce staying up late. It can automatically read sleep data from devices such as smart watches, wristbands, and iPhones that are synchronized with the App, and combine various colors to form a heat map of staying up late.

The earlier you fall asleep, the fresher the color of the square will be; the longer you stay up late, the more eye-catching the color of the square will be, and it will be displayed on the App or mobile desktop as a visual chart.

　　The app has a built-in sleep reminder function, which can send notifications when users are about to stay up late to remind them to go to bed early.

Now data can be imported directly from Apple Health, no internet connection is required, and no user data is stored.

　　Hu Yifei first promoted it on Xiaohongshu, the response was very good, and he gained a lot of users. At present, there are nearly 500 fans on Xiaohongshu.

　　In the first 3 days of its release, StaySleep was on the top 100 list in the App Store's health and fitness section, and has since received a weekly recommendation.

In those days, his social platforms were "inundated with a flood of feedback and suggestions."

　　Many people will give him some good opinions after using this app continuously.

Some users commented, "I downloaded it for the first time, and imported the data. It's all red, and I have suffered from insomnia all year round."

　　Hu Yifei's mother is a loyal user of StaySleep. "My mother supports me very much. She uses this app to record sleep every day, and often sends me a red picture of her staying up late."

　　Hu Yifei also uses StaySleep to record his sleep.

However, he said that he did not have the habit of going to bed early, but he went to bed around 2 am after the development, and now it is about an hour earlier.

"

　　Nowadays, many people are also controversial about the digitization of life, and some even want to try to live completely away from smart devices such as mobile phones.

Hu Yifei admits that quantifying life is sometimes a burden. "For example, I get anxious when I see that my sleep data is very poor, or I see that there are still many tasks that have not been completed. The world is diverse, and it is impossible to say who is right and who is wrong. The best way is to find a way of life that you like.”

　　At present, StaySleep only has an Apple version, not an Android version, because these are two different development languages. For a college student independent developer like him, there is no ability to make two versions at the same time.

　　During the development process, he met many friends and gained a lot of things. He also has a lot of update plans to improve for Apple's newly released iOS 16.

Making this app independently from scratch, Hu Yifei said with a smile, "I still admire myself."